Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Voiid
By ace17
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 482 | 3.10 | 22 | |
| Fun | 543 | 2.82 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 663 | 2.04 | 22 | |
| Theme | 654 | 2.31 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 469 | 2.95 | 22 | |
| Audio | 436 | 2.57 | 22 | |
| Mood | 296 | 3.15 | 21 |
It's not very common to find a 3D Platformer online, and this game utilizes the jam's theme VERY well. The only downsides are that you can't go up/down slopes and the audio can get very irritating to listen to. All in all, this is a pretty good entry.
Thanks for your feedback!
The slopes are definitely painful to climb, this isn't a design choice ; I didn't have time to implement proper collision response, that's the drawbacks of using a custom engine :-)
I agree that jumping up ramps is awkward. The atmosphere was kind of creepy, but it didn't seem to actually have any impact on the gameplay. The ramp level seemed to require a tricky jump close to the end, but I might have jumped in the wrong place.
Clicking on 'fullscreen' did fix the mouse-locking issue for me as well.
I hadn't realized at first that you had used a custom engine to create this; I'm much more impressed than I was originally. I've seen just a bit of what it takes to make a full engine and it's a ton of work, so very nice job!
Hum I have a lot of technical problems. First, on Firefox Quantum I have 403 Forbidden. Second, on Chrome, the fullscreen mode reduces the field of view (square in the center of the screen), and your solution doesn't solve the problem of mouse locking anyway.
Any idea to make it playable?
Hi Nyri0, The field of view isn't "reduced" by the full screen ; the game screen is actually a 1024x1024 square (whether fullscreen or not). So from what you're describing, it seems there's no issue with Chrome.
As for the "Firefox Quantum 403 Forbidden" issue, I think it's related to the interaction between your browser and Gamejolt ; my game doesn't actually know about the network.
The game was challenging. Just enough ambience to be noticeable and not be intrusive. Ramps could have been smoother, and a larger FOV would have helped a lot. Liked the 3D platforming though, nice job.
Very nice! I really liked the atmosphere in this game, and the graphics were minimalistic yet definitely fit well with the mood. It's been a while since I've played a 3D platformer, so thanks for reminding me they exist! ^^
Nice atmosphere! Tight, non-gliding controls for a 3D platformer, unfortunately there's something wrong with the physics on slopes and on some ledges. I had problems on chrome with the view resetting, but Firefox worked well. I couldn't get very far in the game due to somehow getting stuck mid-air on an invisible wall or something and getting frustrated :( So I can't really tell how it tied with the theme?
Spooooky !! Respect for using a custom engine. I loved the atmosphere. The controls and collision could be a bit better but I guess that's the risk of going with a custom made game :P.
Greak job overall
Getting 403 on Gamejolt.
Congrats on the successful game built from your custom engine. A little rough around the edges like with what you've noted with the collision response, but nothing major.
The graphics really worked for me though. Reminded me of my early days of 3D in GM6. I look forward to the other games that will come out of your engine!
First of all, super big props on not only writing your own engine but getting it to work with Enscripten. No problem running it in the browser.
As you hinted, this game is ridiculously uncomfortable. From the start colors to the really upsetting music to just how goddamn close you are to the ground, all this game made me want to do was get to the end as soon as possible. Real good job with the mood.
Edit: wanted to make it clear I meant uncomfortable in a good way. Like a good horror game!
@jjjjason, @wareification, @rplnt, @angelkyriako, @hegemege, @AlexHoratio, @kbjwes77: Thanks for the feedback! About the music, it seems it's messed up on Chrome. The "soundtrack" is rather light on high frequencies, so if you're hearing crackles, pops, or static, it's an issue, not the artistic intent :-)
Fullscreen doesn't work... It Locks the mouse, but it makes the mouse movement very buggy, so you constantly are spanning you look direction all over the place. Can you make a windows build? Anyway, the physics aren't great, which is important for a platformer game. It's impressive that you made your own engine though!
Good amount of work for a compo entry. Having read your comment (btw, replied back on my entry page) I see the link to Kairo in this entry clearly! Also, I feel justified again for the decision I made for my engine. I tried some quick collision code, immediately ran into a ton of edge cases, thought "Nope" and integrated AmmoJS (Bullet physics) instead ;) Is your engine code online somewhere? Would be nice to see how you approached some problems. Oh, the game: the harsh sounds and architecture I feel worked well. Gameplay was simple but clear and I made it to the end. Cheers all around.
(btw, just saw the source code link now, my bad)
@zenmumbler: Hi, thanks for playing and rating! I followed your advice and just bought the complete Penumbra pack for GNU/Linux (on HumbleBundle ; Steam version was cheaper ... but DRM-ed).
Actually, the first thing I did after playing the entry "Disintegrate" ( which I strongly recommend! readers: go play it, it's ~15 min of satisfyingly uncomfortable gameplay ) was to go check out how the physics were dealt with ; when I saw that "ammo.js", I thought "ok, seems nobody solves this problem by themselves, maybe it's *really* hard after all :-)".
In Voiid, the code for the collisions follows the same algorithm as the Quake games (trace a AABB through a list of convex polyhedra). Wall sliding is implemented on top of this, but I didn't have time to implement real wall sliding during the compo, so I cheated, and stuck to XYZ axis-aligned sliding (which is why sliding works on the ground or on walls).
However, I finally got generic sliding working now, and the code is simpler than I thought. It was certainly hard to get right, I guess this represents the investment for not having to drag a dependency on a complete physics engine :-) I'd be happy to share the updated code on github if anyone is interested!
Interesting game, though I still had mouse issues in full screen! I included it in my Ludum Dare 40 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s2AmCPVSXQ
@Ace17 I think it never hurts to put up some code on github, especially anything dealing with 3D physics as that is in very low supply in the world. Deep down I want to have my own physics in there but I already had so many things I wanted to do I had to defer it (and then I realise libraries like PhysX and Bullet have been tweaked and optimised for 10-20 years and well, I don't have that kind of time :) I may make the physics handing pluggable, … NO, more feature creep! bad! … See what happens there?
As for the Penumbra games, they are clearly somewhat older but they showed the initial experimentation of the studio. In Amnesia and Soma, they made the player essentially helpless which makes those games even better. Amnesia can be just plain old terrifying and SOMA is a masterpiece of atmosphere and story and it even ran at full quality and a good (enough) resolution on my 7 year old iMac, so it should work fine anywhere. Don't miss it.
Nice mood. The music is great to feel the stress and the panic of the puzzle. I don't see the point of jumping in the ramps... walking could be more natural. Anyway, Good Work !!!
@zenmumbler your game looks super cool, I'll have to try it as well. If either of you know of more spooky/uncomfortable games made this LD please send em over!
@zenmumbler: Hi, I put the updated code on github ;
The sphere/convex collision detection code is at: https://github.com/Ace17/voiid/blob/master/src/convex.cpp#L18
And the wall sliding code is at: https://github.com/Ace17/voiid/blob/master/src/entities/move.cpp#L3
As you can see, it's not very big, and mostly adapted from Quake. As long as I don't need the player to move or stack arbitrary game objects, I should be OK :-) (what's still missing is the stair-climbing code).
A playable version of the game using the latest code is available at: http://code.alaiwan.org/games/voiid/ (at the moment, there's no new content, only new code).
If anyone has questions on how this works, or suggestions about how to make it work better, don't hesitate to contact me ; I'd be very happy to talk about it!
I just finished "Penumbra: Overture", this was quite an experience, loved it! What's even cooler is that the full game (engine+gameplay) is free software (available on github), written in clean C++! (it uses a third party physics engine). It seems there are lots of things to learn in this codebase, especially about the architecture of the code, which is impressive.
I won't miss Amnesia and Soma (also bought them). I agree, making the player helpless is a good move. In Overture, as soon as you find out how to kill the dogs, they mostly stop being terrifying and just become a repetitive nuisance.